


Adam Milligan's Musical Menagerie

by PetrichorPerfume



Series: Adam Milligan's Musical Menagerie [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Big Brother Gabriel, Cat!Gabriel, Cats are people too, Crack Treated Seriously, Crazy Cat Dude Adam, Fluff, Gabriel Has a Crush, Gen, Happy Ending, Humor, Journalist Sam, Med Student Adam, Mild Language, Munchkin Cat!Castiel, Musical Castiel, Photographer Dean, So does Cas, cat!Lucifer, cat!Michael, kitten!Cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-22 06:08:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2497391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetrichorPerfume/pseuds/PetrichorPerfume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Michael is a majestic Maine Coon who is probably too big to sit in laps as often as he does, Lucifer is a skittish rescue cat, Gabriel is a rambunctious tabby, Castiel is an adorable Munchkin kitten, and Adam is the brave, brave soul who adopted them all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Brief mention of past animal abuse.

“Nononononono!” Adam shrieks when he comes back from the bathroom to find Lucifer rubbing himself all over his laptop, keys making threatening little _click click clicks_ as he goes. “That is so not cute,” he mutters as he wrests the yowling cat off of his computer. Lucifer responds with a disgruntled meow that Adam interrupts to mean _yes it is_ before trotting off to find Michael. “Stupid cat,” he mutters. “You’d better not have messed anything up.”

 

Unfortunately, Lucifer had been born with a chronic inability to go a day without ruining something, so Adam’s e-mail to his professor reads something like _thank you for your assistanjhbiughjikbvdhkliyfcd666h jhguftdr/’[42gd5åvu yvb!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_

 

Sighing, he hits backspace a couple of dozen times and wishes, not for the first time, that Lucifer could be more like sweet, docile Castiel. Sweet, docile Castiel whose claws are currently digging into his spine as the tiny cat attempts the treacherous assent to the peak of Mt. Adam. _I need to get out more,_ he thinks as Cas continues his valiant efforts to ruin yet another shirt. “Cas,” he whines.

 

The newest edition to his family makes a pathetic little _mewing_ noise and plops down onto the plush carpet he’d been forced to install to ensure that the ratio of vet trips to falls was kept to a bare minimum. _Mew. Mew. Mew._ Adam is fairly intimate with Castiel’s overly-dramatic _someone help me, I’m dying_ noises, and this certainly isn’t one of them, so he just rolls his eyes and gets back to work. He still has about fifty pages of reading due by next Friday, and he is _not_ going to let himself get side-tracked into sitting on the floor flicking a string at Castiel for two hours like he did the last time. _Mew mew mew mew mew!_

 

_He’s a very musical cat; I’ll give him that,_ Adam decides, feeling his control slipping inch by inch. _Boring school work versus playing with his adorable little stumpy-legged kitten. Fifty pages of medical treatise versus cooing over Castiel’s precious little stumbling gait._ “Gabriel, get in here!” He roars, earning himself a rather startled _mew_ from behind his chair.

 

A sleek-maned Bengal cat comes ambling into the room with what Adam can only describe as a smirk. He knows that Gabriel isn’t feeling particularly smug right not (at least not smugger than usual); the smirk just seems to be his default resting face. _Just like Sammy’s resting bitchface,_ a voice that sounds suspiciously like his oldest half-brother’s notes.

 

“Your kitten needs you,” he informs his second-oldest feline. None of his cats are actually related, but the three oldest ones tend to act like brothers and they all enjoy babying and taking care of the youngest member of their family. “Keep him entertained for a couple of hours; I should be done by dinner-time,” he mumbles before diving headlong into _A Field Guide to Anatomy: 7 th Edition._

 

***

 

Adam finishes next week’s reading a half an hour ahead of schedule. He shrugs his shoulders a little to free him of the tension borne of two hours hunched over a textbook with blocks of microscopic print the size of small countries before rising and making his way into the living room to check on his furry friends. He finds Michael and Lucifer grooming each other while Gabriel and Cas chase each other across the carpeted floor. “Hey guys, did you miss me?” He greets.

 

He’s rewarded with an armful of overgrown Maine Coon, and Michael is _really_ getting far too big to keep doing this to him. “Mika, get off of me, you big oaf,” he groans, trying to get a good grip on his surprisingly graceless cat that won’t send him tumbling down onto his younger companions.

 

Instead of making any move to jump down or assist Adam in his rearrangement, Mika starts purring like a little motor. The noise sets off Lucifer, who drags razor-sharp claws down his leg with what Adam’s come to call his ‘pet me now or die’ meow. Gabriel responds with an answering meow, and Castiel starts mewing in full force once more. Soon enough, a symphony of cat sounds fills his living room. It’s actually quite rhythmical, almost as if his animal friends were emoting completely in synch with one another. _And the spheres,_ Adam adds jokingly.

 

“Guys, guys. I’ve only got two hands. And Luce, _ow_ , that really freakin’ hurts.” Lucifer releases him with a sympathetic hiss. (Adam hadn’t thought that hisses could be sympathetic before he’d met Lucifer, but then again, there were a _lot_ of things he hadn’t thought possible before Lucifer had fell into his life – quite literally, in fact; he’d found the second member of his adopted family when an emaciated black cat with several dozen lacerations across his body had fallen into his arms from a nearby tree the day after Halloween. Adam had taken him home and nursed him back to health, fully intending to drop him off at the no-kill shelter he volunteered at most weekends once he was strong enough, but the little fellow had taken an instant liking to Michael and the two had been inseparable ever since.)  

 

Adam chuckles and lowers himself down on the floor for easy access. Two tiny paws start to knead at his thigh and he grins as he picks a still-mewing Castiel off the floor. “Hey, little one,” he coos, leaning forward to bump noses with him, much to Castiel’s kittenish delight. “Sorry I couldn’t play with you earlier. I’m going to school to become a doctor, so I can help people just like I helped your big brother Luce when I first met him.” Castiel squeaks his understanding, and Adam can’t resist the urge to cup him to his chest and bask in his infinite cuteness.

 

Of course, that’s the moment his phone chooses to ring in his breast pocket, shrieking out some _highly_ inappropriate lyrics that had been his brothers’ idea of a joke the last time they’d visited. Castiel shrieks and flails wildly, successfully managing to nick Adam’s chest and free himself from his owner’s slackening grip. He mews pitifully the entire foot and a half fall onto Mika’s fur. Lucifer bolts away, and even Gabriel takes a half a step back. Mika is, as always, completely unmoved by the commotion.

 

“Dean,” he greets as soon as he fishes his phone out of his pocket. “You scared my cats,” he adds, almost petulantly.

 

“Hello to you, too,” Dean answers.

 

Adam rolls his eyes. He never needs to make small talk with his cats. “What do you want? It’s almost dinner-time, and you know how grumpy Cas gets if he isn’t fed by five.”

 

Dean chuckles. “Don’t worry, I won’t keep you long, cat-boy. Me n’ Sammy were just wondering if we could crash at your place for the weekend.”

 

“Again?” Adam whines. He has a full DVR of recorded shows he’d been planning on binge-watching this weekend, and that simply wouldn’t be possible with his annoying, obnoxious brothers around. “Weren’t you just here, like, a month ago?”

 

Dean laughs again. “We should be there early Saturday morning.”

 

Adam groans. “Saturday morning as in eight a.m. sharp, or Saturday morning as in ‘wake up all the neighbors at three a.m. dragging your equipment up the stairs as loud as humanly possible?’”

 

“It’s like you don’t know me at all,” Dean quips just before the line goes dead.

 

Adam growls and pitches forward, folding himself over Mika and Cas and burying his head in his hands. A warm, sandpapery tongue that can only be Gabriel’s (Lucifer is still too skittish to get close enough to lick him) rasps against his cheek and he sighs. _Might as well get it over with,_ he thinks. “Sam and Dean are coming over this weekend.”

 

Somewhere behind the couch, Lucifer _howls._ Mika runs off to check on him, dislodging Castiel from his cozy spot atop his silken fur and leaving him to mewl angrily between Adam’s legs. When he finally gathers the strength to look up, Gabriel is doing the closest thing to a jig that Adam’s ever seen a non-human do. Then his dinner alarm goes off and Adam realizes with a start that it’s already Friday.

 

It’s going to be a long weekend.


	2. Chapter 2

Somewhere in between rewarming Castiel’s bottle of formula – the little bugger is perfectly capable of eating and digesting solids, but he still occasionally turns his nose up at his moist kitten kibble, leaving Adam little choice but to pull him onto his lap and bottle-feed him. He has the sneaking suspicion that Castiel just likes being babied, and the scars to prove that the older felines _would_ try to smother him in his sleep if he denied their baby anything – and settling down to watch reruns of Downtown Abbey, Adam must have fallen asleep.

 

A series of unnecessarily clamorous bangs jolts him from his rather lovely dream about kissing that nice girl from his Roman Architecture class who always blushes when he sits next to her, and Gabriel falls off the couch with all the grace of a poorly trained demolition crew.

 

“Quiet down, I’m coming,” he calls at what he deems is a perfectly reasonable volume for two nineteen in the morning. “They’d better not scare Luce this time,” he mumbles to himself. The last time his brothers had visited, the poor creature had spent the next two days hiding between the bed and the wall. Not even Mika had been allowed near him, and it had taken a full week for Lucifer to revert back to his normal mood-swinging attitude of _pet-me-cuddle-me- **touch-me-and-die** -why-did-you-stop?_

 

Apparently, his brothers have no concept of acceptable voices to use indoors at such mind-numbingly early hours of the morning, so several more thunderous bangs reverberate through his apartment in the time it takes him to disentangle himself from Mika, stumble across the floor, trip over Cas, pick himself up, and throw open the door. “I hate you,” he says by way of greeting. Both of his brothers grin, looking far too cheerful (and far too caffeinated) for such an ungodly hour of the morning. (Adam feels that it’s _really_ important to stress just how flipping early it is, but that could just be his exhaustion and/or pure and utter horror at the thought of all the new and inventive ways Lucifer will think up to inform him of his displeasure about having guests.)

 

Sam makes a vague gesture towards his entryway when Adam just slumps against the door, making absolutely no move whatsoever to let them in. _I’m kinda like a cat sometimes,_ he thinks drowsily. “Um... It’s been a really long drive, and... I’ve had five cups of coffee, and our last rest stop was two hundred miles back, so...”

 

_He dances like Gabriel,_ Adam muses as he watches his brother shift his weight from one foot to another. _No wonder Gabe’s got a kitten-crush on him._ He’s about to drift back off into a dreamland full of dancing Gabriels and kitten-crushes on pretty Roman Architecture classmates when Dean claps right in his face. He startles and lands flat on his rump. For once, he’s grateful for the carpeting, even if it is a nightmare to keep clean with four shed-happy felines.

 

Sam makes a beeline to the bathroom while Dean steps over him, equipment swinging dangerously close to Adam’s face. When Adam finally recovers enough of his dignity to pull himself together and off the floor, he spins around to find Dean dumping his stuff in the corner. “Hey! You _know_ that’s Lucifer’s corner, and he’s upset enough that you two are staying here. Find another corner. Jeez.”

 

Dean rolls his eyes, but moves his equipment to the other corner nevertheless. “What kind of name is Lucifer anyway? You’re gonna give the poor thing a complex.”

 

Adam is about to launch into the oft-given (when, not that often; so far he’s only had to explain his unconventional naming system to Rebecca from Roman Architecture and Alfie from next door) explanation about how he’d named all of his cats after angels from his favorite TV series Preternatural, a dramatic roller coaster of emotion about two sisters, Dianna and Samantha, who travel around Europe hunting monsters, when Dean lets out an unmanly _squeak_ and falls dramatically to his knees.  

 

“Oh. My. _God._ Who is this?” Dean all but screams.

 

Adam does a quick mental calculation and realizes that neither of his brothers has met the newest edition to his family yet. “That’s Castiel. He’s a munchkin kitten who’s deaf in one ear, so be careful when you approach him from the left.”

 

Castiel _mews_ in a way that Adam’s never heard before, much to his owner’s chagrin. _He’s_ supposed to be the one Cas made noises for, not one of his bumbling, too-loud, too-awake, good-for-nothing brothers!

 

“He is so _cute!_ ” Dean does scream this time, thankfully nearer to the kitten’s left ear than his right, so hopefully Adam won’t have another cat scared for life by Dean’s harmless yet larger-than-life presence. “Can I take some pictures of him? Please?”

 

Adam groans low in his throat. There’s little he can do to stop his whirlwind of a brother when he finds a muse for his camera, and it would be nice to have some professional pictures of Cas while he’s still a kitten. “Go ahead,” he sighs, knowing that it’s a lost cause anyway.

 

Dean looks sheepish for a moment, which is always, always, _always_ a bad thing, then rises to his full height and asks, “Do you happen to have any outfits for him?”

 

Adam blushes violently. “No, I do not have any-” At Dean’s rather pointed look, he falters. “I have a strawberry outfit, a pumpkin costume, angel wings, and a purple tutu. Gabriel’s old candy cane outfit might be his size too. Which would you pref- Stupid question; I’ll get them all.”

 

***

 

An hour later, Castiel is gazing up at Dean adoringly as the photographer takes snapshot after snapshot of him from various angles and positions. Dean keeps pausing to adjust the light or the filter or whatever it is that photographers need to adjust every few moments (Adam isn’t exactly sure how this whole ‘professional photography’ thing works; his fifty-dollar Radio Hut camera works just fine without all those extra buttons) or to rearrange his subject, and Cas just lets it happen, falling on his side when Dean gives him a gentle push and even keeping his paw up in the air for a few minutes before falling asleep right there on the stool.

 

Gabriel is too busy purring on Sam’s lap like a love-sick puppy to notice when Dean takes a few shots of him. Sam himself is becoming increasingly less amused by the display, a development that Adam is pretty sure has something to do with the two additional cups of coffee Sam has downed since his arrival and the fact that Gabriel just won’t let him up for _anything._ Adam, for his part, has firmly decided not to lift a single finger to help. _It’s exactly what he deserves for letting Dean be so damn loud all the time,_ he justifies. _Besides, I am helping by being a good little brother and not going into the kitchen to find dishes to wash or something._

 

Sam doesn’t seem to think so, if the increasingly frantic looks he keeps shooting his way are anything to go by. “Adam, this isn’t funny anymore,” he whines. “How is he even doing this? He can’t be more than ten pounds and I literally can’t budge him!”

 

Adam decides to take pity on his giant brother. “Gabriel, why don’t you go get a few together-shots with Cas?” He suggests, poking the cat to startle him out of his Sam-induced daze.

 

Gabriel huffs at him but jumps off anyway, leaving a very relieved Sam in his wake. “He actually understood that?” He asks in the time it takes for him to lift himself to his full height.

 

“Cats are people too,” Adam reminds him as Sam launches himself at the bathroom door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two more chapters to go, plus a mini-sequel. I have tentative plans to turn this into a series.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not own a Munchkin kitten, so please speak to your veterinarian before feeding it from a soufflé bowl. 
> 
> Also, please remember to treat our friends the black cats with gentle kindness and loving respect during the upcoming holiday. 
> 
> //PSA OVER

Adam awakens for the second time that day to the dual assault of needle-like claws trying and succeeding to dig a hole into the center of his chest and of Sam and Gabriel’s matching screams.

 

 _Ahhhhh!_ _Mreooowww!_ They both scream like the little girls they secretly are, while Lucifer’s dagger-like claws sink further into his skin with a sensation that Adam, with all of his vast medical expertise, would classify as _damn freakin’ painful._

 

“Luce, stop,” he chides when another pair of screams threatens to shatter his eardrums. The pain has reached a level of _Holy Mother of God, are you trying to rip my heart out?_ but he attempts to keep his voice calm and level nevertheless in a desperate attempt to keep Lucifer from panicking further. “You’re safe, buddy,” he continues after deciding that he’s probably going to die an early cat-induced death anyway and that he might as well take the statistically improbable chance of Luce punching holes in his heart and make this into a learning experience. “No one is going to hurt you; I promise.” Lucifer’s claws retract back into his paws and Adam breathes a much-needed sigh of relief, taking the opportunity to gently nudge his feline friend away before the next bout of screaming begins. “Go find Mika; he’ll protect you,” he bids Lucifer before stumbling out of his bedroom, half-drunk on not nearly enough sleep and sporting eight idly dribbling holes in his chest.

 

***

 

Sam, on the other hand, wakes up to the infinitely less painful (though apparently more frightening) sight of two big, brown, soulful eyes gazing back at him. So he does what any grown man who travels across the country with his big brother in a classic muscle car photographing and writing about America’s urban environments would do – he screams.

 

Gabriel screams back, a long, loud _mrrrreooooooow!_ that leaves Sam wide-eyed and faintly bemused. Just out of curiosity, he screams again. The cat screams back. Sam screams once more. So does the cat.

 

Then Adam blearily makes his out of his bedroom and into the light, scowling hard enough to deter even Cas from giving him his customary morning greeting. “You’re _scaring_ Luce,” he hisses at his brother, who should probably be mature enough at the age of twenty-six not to get into screaming-matches with cats on his brother’s couch at ten a.m. in the morning. “And _you,_ ” he continues, pointing at Gabriel, “should _really_ know better.”

 

Both Sam and Gabriel have the dignity to look remorseful, Sam giving him his best _I’m sorry, Adam_ pout and Gabriel tucking his bushy tail between his legs. The sight softens Adam’s expression enough that Cas decides to risk saying hello and bowls straight into his ankle at full kitten-speed. He _mews_ in surprise when the attack doesn’t budge his owner in the slightest, and tries again, hopping up and over Adam’s feet and batting at his toes with big, owlish eyes. _Mew mew mew mewmewmew._ Adam takes that as his cue to pick up the feisty little kitten, and giggles when the tiny furball starts to squirm in his arms.

 

“Hey, Cas,” he coos, tickling the kitten’s belly and smiling when Cas tries to gnaw at his fingers. “I’m gonna give you some formula for breakfast today, okay? Your big brother Gabriel used to get tummy aches when Sam and Dean were here when he was your age, and I don’t want you feeling icky, all right, little guy?”

 

Dean makes a wretching sound from the kitchen doorway, and Adam looks up to glare at him. “That is so sickeningly sweet, I think I’m getting a cavity,” Dean drawls.

 

“Says the guy who fell in love with my brand-new kitten last night, demanded to photograph him for five hours, then got drunk and sung him a love song,” Adam shoots back. He may be the little brother, but he can give back just as good as he gets.

 

Dean blushes. “Doesn’t mean I’ve got to baby talk him and bottle feed him so he doesn’t ‘feel all icky,’” he grumbles, finger quotes and all.

 

Adam rolls his eyes. “Would you like to feed him?”

 

Dean perks up like a little Meer cat on one of Discovery shows he’d liked to watch with Mika when his oldest cat was still a kitten. “Could I?” He begs.

 

“Just don’t drop him,” Adam snorts, carefully transferring his precious bundle to Dean and failing to hide a smile when his older brother positively _melts._

 

***

 

Before long, Adam has a bowl of kitten formula heated to perfection and is instructing Dean on the proper method of administering the bottle. Cas is old enough to mostly take care of himself when Adam puts the bottle to his mouth, but Dean doesn’t need to know that, and Adam is far too eager to capitalize on the perfect blackmail opportunity and just the slightest bit charmed by the way Dean keeps cooing over the tiny cat to care about whether the information he’s giving him is particularly relevant or not.

 

“He’s a noisy feeder,” Adam warns just as Castiel’s tiny mouth latches onto the nipple. He waits for the mighty suckling and slurping sounds that have accompanied the kitten’s meals since the day Adam got him, but all that is forthcoming is the occasional snuffling sound.

 

“Ha. Maybe he just likes me better,” Dean laughs.

 

Adam frowns deeply. “He likes me just fine,” he protests. “He’s _my_ kitten.”

 

“Jealous much?” Sam jibes, gesturing to his lapful of purring Gabriel.

 

Adam just pouts and turns away, torn over cooing over Castiel’s adorable new noises and resenting the fact that it was Dean who elicited them.

 

“So,” Sam says after a few moments of tense silence. “Have you made any progress with Lucifer?”

 

Adam nods, thankful for the change of subject. “Yeah, actually. He’s been a lot less skittish lately, he doesn’t get as freaked out by loud noises anymore, and he’s becoming a bit more independent. Mika keeps wondering where his shadow ran off to.”

 

Sam smiles warmly. “I’m glad. Maybe one of these days he’ll let us see him.”

 

Adam makes a contemplative noise as he considers how Lucifer would respond to being within five feet of Sam. “Maybe. Just don’t expect him to be like this pile of mush over there,” he jokes, making a little kissy face at Gabriel, who hisses at him in warning before turning his full attention back to his Sam-love fest. “I don’t know what you see in him, Gabe,” he adds, more for Sam’s benefit than the cat’s.

 

“Hey,” Sam whines predictably. “He’s probably partial to my good looks-”

 

“All the better for clawing.”

 

“Or my height.”

 

“All the better for climbing.”

 

“Or my luscious hair.”

 

“All the better for batting.”

 

Sam sticks out his tongue and Adam responds in kind, figuring he’s just young enough to get away with it.

 

“So what are you guys doing in town, anyway?” Adam finds himself asking once Gabriel’s increasingly insistent demands for Sam’s attention draw his older brother out of their staring contest.

 

“We were on our way down to Colorado Springs and it was only fifty miles out of our way, so we figured, hey, why not go check up on our adorable baby brother and his crazy cats,” Dean answers without tearing his eyes from Cas.

 

Adam huffs. “They are not _crazy_ , well, Gabe and Luce can be, and so can Cas, but he’s still a kitten, Luce has his reasons and Gabe _is_ a bit of a troublemaker, I suppose. And I am _so_ not adorable.”

 

“Are too,” Sam counters. When Gabriel interrupts another would-be staring match with a loud, angry rumble that even Sam understands to mean ‘pet me or else,’ he shakes his head fondly and continues. “Anyway, we’re not planning on staying long. We should be out of your hair by Sunday night at the latest.”

 

“Sunday night as in ‘taking a slice of pie for the road and riding out into the sunset’ or Sunday night as in ‘oh-my-God-Dean-it’s-four-a.m-in-the-morning-and-people-have-to-get-up-to-go-to-work-soon-and-my-neighbor-is-going-to-kill-me?’”

 

“It’s like you don’t know us at all,” Sam laughs.

 

***

 

When Mika makes his grand appearance at noon, Sam and Dean are spread out across his kitten table, researching their next assignment and cooing over cat pictures, respectively, and Adam is mainlining coffee like his life depends on it. The Maine Coon jumps on the countertops – and, really, he’s too big for that too, and Adam is almost too slow to stop from him knocking over the stack of cans haphazardly piled there. “Nononono,” he yelps, jumping up just in time to avoid imminent disaster. “And today is a dry food day. You know that.”

 

Michael meows at him, a sad, pitiful little noise that has Adam reconsidering every life choice he’s ever made that hasn’t in some way bettered his cat’s lives. “Damn it, you win. You’re lucky I get a discount on the brand you like,” he mutters, flicking open the closest drawer and closing his fingers around his favorite can opener. He dumps one and a half cans in one bowl because for some strange reason he’s never quite managed to figure out, Mika and Luce won’t eat unless he gives them a bowl to share, then spoons the remainder into Gabriel’s bowl. “Hey, Gabe, you can play with your boy toy later; come keep Mika and Luce company,” he calls, following a proudly trotting Michael into his bedroom. Lucifer is tangled up in his blankets and greets him with a pitiful mewl, and Adam can’t help but smile at the sight.

 

“Oh, Luce, what did you get yourself into?” He asks, setting the bowls of food down and freeing the squirming cat with one firm tug. “What, no ‘thank you for saving me, Prince Charming?’” He pouts when Lucifer springs away without so much as a wayward ‘meow.’

 

 _Meow, meow,_ Lucifer says. For all Adam knows, it could very well mean ‘Die, human’ or ‘move, Mika,’ but he takes it to mean thank you. “You’re welcome,” he answers.

 

***

 

“Does Cas need to eat again?” Dean asks as soon as Adam gets back. He waves a cat of the older cat’s food in his little brother’s face and Adam rolls his eyes.

 

“Yes, but not that. He’s still a kitten, Dean. He needs kitten food. Even you should know that,” Adam responds, wresting the can from Dean’s fingers and setting it back in its rightful place. “He normally likes kibble for lunch, but you can put it out for him and watch him eat if you’d like.”

 

“Why do the other cats eat only twice a day? Are you starving them?” Dean accuses, hands on his hips like a worried mother hen.

 

“I’m going to carefully not be offended by that,” Adam replies. “The other cats are older, so they only need to eat twice a day. Most weekends, I give them lunch and dinner, and if they get hungry earlier, they’re more than capable of letting me know.” He thinks better of not taking offense and leans over to slap Dean on the arm. “And, no, I am not _starving_ them! How dare you ask a question like that?”

 

“Ow,” Dean whines, rubbing at his arm. “Meanie.” He grabs the bag of kitten food along with Lucifer’s old bowl and fills it most of the way to the top.

 

Adam groans at the sight and gently pushes Dean out of the way. “Are you trying to break him?” He sighs. “That was Lucifer’s bowl, back before I gave up on trying to feed him separately.”

 

“So? It’s not as if Cas is gonna catch cooties or something.”

 

“Lucifer was an eleven-month-old American shorthair when this bowl was his. Cas is a two-month-old Munchkin kitten. Huge difference, Dean.” He takes out the mini-soufflé bowl he’d repurposed as his littlest friend’s food bowl. ‘Castiel’ is written in his neighbor’s sprawling script in permanent marker on the side, and Dean honest-to-God squeals when he sees it.

 

“Is there anything about that cat that isn’t cute?” Dean asks wistfully.

 

“You’re welcome to scourge his and Gabriel’s litter box if you’d like to know the real answer,” Adam says helpfully, setting the bowl down on the floor and looking pointedly up at Dean.

 

Dean wrinkles his nose as he sinks down beside the bowl. “I’ll pass.”

 

Adam smirks when Castiel comes wobbling across the carpet towards his food and his newest friend. “Thought so.”


	4. Chapter 4

Sunday morning begins with a very large, very unwelcome presence in his bed. “Sam,” he grits out, voice strained. “Why are y-”

 

“Shh,” Sam shushes him, far more quietly that Adam had previously thought him capable of. “Look.”

 

Adam opens his eyes to the sight of Lucifer’s own, peering back him sleepily. Lucifer blinks; he blinks back. “What exactly am I looking at?” He asks, eyes all out of focus, drowning in the sea of Lucifer’s baby blues.

 

Then Lucifer purrs, and Adam realizes with a start that Sam is in his bed, _petting_ _Lucifer._ “Lucifer?” He whispers, voice raspy with the gravity of the situation. Lucifer is letting someone that isn’t him pet him, and looking incredibly pleased about it, too. “Hey, buddy,” he laughs gently. “Finally got it through that thick skull of yours that no one is gonna hurt you ever again, didn’t you?” He asks, eyes watering without his permission, because _damn it all,_ this is _huge._

 

Adam _knows_ that meow. It’s a _pet me, please_ meow, but Lucifer can’t honestly want them to both stroke him at the same time, could he? _Meow._ Tentatively, he reaches forward to stroke under Lucifer’s chin. Lucifer responds with a rumbling purr loud enough to shake the bed, which disturbs the cat cuddle pile in the corner. One by one, Michael, then Gabriel, then Castiel make their way onto the bed. Mika and Gabe settle themselves beside Lucifer and Cas plops himself down right on top of his big brother.

 

And if Dean ‘accidently’ ‘trips and falls’ and lands at the edge of their cuddle puddle when he stumbles in fifteen minutes later in search of coffee grounds, well, Adam isn’t going to complain.

 

“Dean, get off my foot.”

 

Much.  


End file.
